The present invention relates to a method for enabling interaction between a user terminal and a service control point in an intelligent network as described in the preamble of claim 1 and a service control point as described in the preamble of claim 2.
Such a method is already known in the art, e.g. from the section SRF application entity procedures, pages 92-113 in xe2x80x9cINTELLIGENT NETWORK (IN); INTELLIGENT NETWORK CAPABILITY SET 1 (CS1); CORE INTELLIGENT NETWORK APPLICATION PROTOCOL (INAP); PART 1 PROTOCOL SPECIFICATIONxe2x80x9d with reference ETS 300 374-1 published in September 1994 by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Therein, the user interaction within an intelligent network consisting of a service control point, a service switching point and an intelligent peripheral further respectively referred to as a SCP, SSP and an IP, is described. In case the service script executed by the SCP needs input from one party of the call, which may be either the calling party or the called party, for instance an account-code or an authorisation code, the SCP instructs the IP to send an announcement requesting the input and subsequently collecting the digits entered by the requested call party. The input of the requested call party is forwarded to the SCP that receives the input and proceeds executing the service script using this received input. In case of missing DTMF capabilities of the requested call party""s users terminal or in case this meant requested call party user has problems with the entering of a long card number the user interaction fails, the execution of the service script is stopped and the call is consequently released. In the end the call is not successful and consequently not providing the network operator with revenues.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method and related devices of the above known type but wherein the user interaction is improved in such way that an increased number of calls succeed.
According to the invention, this object is achieved by the method as described in claim 1, the service control point as described in claim 2, the operator position computer terminal as described in claim 3 and the related software modules as described in claim 5 and claim 6.
In this way, the service control point does provide the operator, via the operator position computer terminal with the context of the call and the questions the operator needs to ask the involved party, which may be the calling party as well as the called party. In case of misunderstandings or technical problems on the side of this involved party, the operator is able to overcome these by directly communicating with the meant involved party user over an established telephone connection, under control of the service control point. The operator subsequently provides the service control point with the requested information on the involved party. The service control point then is able to proceed the execution of invoked intelligent network service with the necessary information on the involved party.
Another characteristic feature of the present invention is achieved by the call centre as described in claim 4.
By using a call centre consisting of a number of such operator positions, each containing an operator position computer terminal and a operator position telephone terminal, a number of simultaneous calls can be handled at the same time, in this way increasing the number of succeeded calls even more.